Scorecard

The Toothless Commish

Despite cloaking their work in a shameless piece of creative writing bearing the title "Restructuring Report Enhances Commissioner's Authority," and timing last Friday's announcement in New York City to coincide with the opening of the Winter Olympics, major league owners made a long-overdue admission in redefining and clarifying the commissioner's job. To wit: The commissioner is hired by the owners to serve their interests.

Remember how Fay Vincent tried to order realignment in 1992 under the commissioner's "best interests of baseball" powers? The owners promptly forced him out of office. Now, with this latest missive, they have eliminated the prevailing myth of the great, impartial commissioner who weighs the best interests of everyone—owners, players, managers, umpires, fans. While the commissioner can still act on matters involving the "integrity" of baseball, his powers are spelled out so that he can no longer unilaterally act on the business matters of baseball, such as expansion, interleague play and realignment.

The owners did empower the commissioner to serve as the point person in labor negotiations, but that role is similarly toothless. The commissioner cannot force his will on the owners by acting "in the best interests of baseball" on labor issues either, so no commissioner can, say, order the end to a lockout the way Bowie Kuhn did in 1976.

In short, the commissioner will safeguard the game's image while the owners will mind their wallets.

Downhill Coverage

It wasn't so much that Jim Nantz mistakenly told us that AJ Kitt had won the men's downhill. Nor was it the fact that Pat O'Brien couldn't find anyone to take his hot dog while he took his droll stroll down the Storgaten. What really bothered us about CBS's Winter Olympic Coverage was the copious amount of hot air blowing our way from Lillehammer.

From the moment Charles Kuralt told us on Sunday morning that Tommy Moe of the U.S. had won the men's downhill until the network actually showed his 1:45.75 run, 12 hours and 35 minutes elapsed. In all, CBS had nine hours of Olympic coverage on Sunday, and only about an hour of it was devoted to action. The rest was travelogues, promos for CBS Olympic coverage (including countless reminders that we would indeed see Moe ski—sometime), man-in-the-Storgaten interviews, promos for David Letterman's mom, shots of Hillary and Chelsea, promos for Connie Chung, ice-sculpting exposés and hundreds upon hundreds of commercials.

As a consequence of all this tease and tickle, CBS drained every bit of drama out of Moe's gold medal run. But then, that was to be expected after the lackluster coverage of the opening ceremonies last Saturday night. To borrow a metaphor from the ceremonies, CBS laid an egg. Hosts Andrea Joyce and Greg Gumbel seemed to be covering the Tournament of Roses Parade. Ed Bradley and Kuralt, both in dire need of hat consultants, destroyed much of their journalistic credibility with inane gushing. As Kuralt went on and on and on, we were kind of hoping one of those mythical vetters would push him over.

There were some good features on Sunday: a piece on Moe's upbringing, a re-creation of the assault by neo-Nazis on U.S. luger Duncan Kennedy, a skier's-eye view of the downhill course. But if the level of event coverage had been an EKG, several of the announcers would have been declared dead. For the most part, the people at CBS Sports have gone backward from their last Winter Olympics, in 1992. They were rookies then; no such excuse this time around.